you have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been chosen.

i watched my best friend get married this last weekend.

it was a beautiful wedding, filled with so much rejoicing and excitement.
Mothers wept as joy intermingled with sadness gripped their hearts.
Fathers smiled sadly as they gave what was most precious to them away to someone else.
Children ran around and did what only children can do best: fill the silence with crying or baby gibberish.

one of my favorite memories from this past weekend was during the actual wedding,
my best friend and his wife to be were asked long before the wedding by
the pastor the question: why? Why did they want to marry each other? Both wrote out their responses and it was
read to those in attendance. The cool thing was that they had not heard each others responses
until the very moment they were read to the congregation.
For some reason, this part really stuck with me.

I cannot forget what my best friend said.
He talked about how he could begin by going through all the cliches and
attempt to express the beautiful complexity that is love. He called go on and
on about how beautiful his bride was . . . how she possessed all the qualities he
so greatly desired in a spouse. But he didn't do that. Instead, when asked
why he was going to marry this particular girl, his answer was this: "Because I choose her."
Apart from the emotional highs and lows of love . . . separate from the "honeymoon phase" of marriage . . .
at the heart of my friend's love for his wife lies a choice. He has chosen this one particular girl. He has
set her apart as his own and called her to be his and his alone. Because the emotions and feelings of love will not
always be there. Love is both the affection of the heart and intellect of the mind.

There will be times when emotions fail and what will stand alone
is the commitment that was made to love; the cognitive choice to love.

In the Greek language,the word used for the deepest most committed kind of
love is agape. One of the definitions for agape reads: "the power of spirit
that results in the choosing of one amongst thousands."
There is something about being chosen. something that changes us inside.
For someone to call you out and say: "You are mine. I want you.
I choose you to be mine. I choose you. its you I want. just you. only you."

humans love to choose and pick.
it communicates value and worth to the individual chosen.
When we were little we were chosen to play kickball.
We get chosen for awards and honors.
We get picked to be on the team.
We are chosen out of a select few to be a part of something.
We are chosen. And when we get chosen, we feel loved.

The higher the emotional and spiritual risk, the more important the choosing.
When there is more at stake . . . choices become the catalyst of human existence.
Our choices change the very course of our lives.
perhaps one of the most (if not the most) important choice one will make
in this life is choice of spouse: Marriage.

I hope that you will get to experience what it is like to be chosen out of many.
To have someone pick you out of the crowd and say, "I want you".
I pray that you will get to know what it is like to feel valued and loved through
the varying degrees of emotions that humans go through.
I hope that you have the wisdom to know when to choose someone and when not
to choose someone. I pray that when you do choose, you really choose.

Because when you are angry with the way they treated you,
when you are tired from work and kids,
when morning breath threatens to overwhelm your nostrils,
when you find yourself looking into a mirror and not liking the reflection,
when you are depressed because you lose sight of meaning,
when you don't want to go to that stupid party or
hang out with those weird people that you don't know that well . . .

you made a choice. A choice to love.
you chose a person. A person to direct and devote all your love toward always.
And when you are in the darkest parts of your life together with your spouse,
when you are in the thickets of confusion and angst,
it is the choice that you made long ago that will guide you back to the light.

some of us are really good at loving in the highs.
and that is great but the human heart needs more than that.
real love is when we love in the middle and lows of life too.

because sometimes the emotions and feelings will be there.
and sometimes they won't.
but the choice . . . the choice will remain.